Male Panther Stopped Eating - losing weight

[ianbatten]

Hello All,

Hoping for some pointers here before I take my boy Claude to the vet.

I bought him about 4 months ago on Gumtree, he is a male Panther, and was unwanted from the previous owner due to them downsizing. Previous incredibly well looked after, was beautifully coloured, a lovely looking size, and extremely tame (as soon as someone enters the room he's straight to the front of the cage and climbing up your arm, never any sign of aggression or territorial behaviour in the slightest).

He's housed in (what I think) is a lovely and more than ample enclosure. It's around 5ft tall, has a UV light and basking spot lamp, and in the day is around 20-23c overall, and about 29-30c under the spot lamp. Photo of enclosure as follows:



He was feeding happily for the first month or so after getting him, with him feeding from both my hand and the cage, happily chowing down large locusts, morio worms, crickets, etc (all gut loaded, and twice a week calcium powdered). However over the past 4-5 weeks or so, his appetite has gradually got less and less, and I've noticed him losing a fair bit of weight (although I haven't yet weighed him).

Whilst he is still pooing occasionally, I haven't actually seen him eat in a long while. He likes to have his head sprayed lightly and lick the water off, and today when he was doing that, when he opened his mouth and stuck his tongue out to drink, I put a wax worm in his lips and he chowed it down. He went on to do the same with a further 2 waxworms, and 2 morio worms. So from this I can only assume that he is keen to eat, but for whatever reason, isn't choosing to feed himself.

Here's a few photos of Claude:







When he's in his cage, he does look noticably thinner (you can see his spine ridge and sometimes ribs):





He always has his dripper on and I spray him morning and evening, and allow him out of the cage to crawl about both on my and another large ficus in the room as much as possible. He's also very active, and is always showing a nice colouring.

I'm not entirely sure what could be wrong here. Could this potentially be a tongue problem? He will always lick branches and water etc, but haven't seen him fire his tongue fully out for a long while.

Any suggestions would be most welcome!

 

[carol5208]

Hello there and welcome to the forums! Sorry you are having some issue with your boy. Can he shoot his tongue out? He might not be eating because he cannot shoot his tongue. He may have injured it or it could be some nutritional imbalance going on that causes it not to function. Do you use calcium on your feeders? Another consideration is something going on inside of his mouth which may cause him pain to eat. Have you ever opened his mouth and looked inside? Also, sometimes chameleons will just go off food. We call it a hunger strike maybe because they just become bored with the same old food. I know there are only so many feeders available, so it is tough. The fact that he did eat when you put the food in his mouth, tells me he is hungry, so I am leaning towards he cannot feed himself. I may be totally wrong. As far as your cage, the size is nice but it really could use some more plants to fill it up and more vines and supportive branches. He should have atleast one horizontal branch that is about 8 inches down below the basking light that he can grip with all four feet comfortably.. Lastly, there is always the possibility of parasites which can cause them to lose their appetite. Now that he has eaten, he should probably poop in the next few days. I would get a sample of that and take it to your vet to be checked. Atleast if it is negative, you can rule that out.